Broken Prey

jerked his head at Lucas—“called me Charlie. Who the fuck is he?”
    “You don’t read the newspaper or watch TV?” Lucas said. “The guy who raped and killed a girl and then raped and killed a guy and killed the guy’s little boy? That guy?”
    Clanton was baffled. “That guy? What does that guy got to do with us?”
    “We know Charlie hung out here,” Lucas said. His whole face hurt when he talked. “His mom says so.”
    Clanton arched his back to get his head up out of the dirt. “Not since we been here. Maybe he worked with the Martins, but I don’t know no Charlie Pope.”
    Lucas turned his head to Sandy Martin. “Is that right? He hung with you guys?”
    “I can’t believe this,” Martin said. “I was just stopping off before I went fishing.”
    “The guys who ran . . . we believe one of them was Charlie Pope,” Youngie said. “Look, we’re gonna get them. All that plastic in the barn, all that is perfect for fingerprints. We got clothes and a couple of trucks. So tell us . . . what’s their names? If one of them isn’t Charlie Pope . . .”
    “Ah, fuck you,” Clanton said. He snorted once, then said something else.
    “What?”
    “Sean McCollum and Mike Benton, that’s who that is,” he said. “You’ll get all their stuff anyway. Isn’t no Charlie Pope.”
    “Where are the Martins?” Lucas asked.
    “Alaska, I guess,” Clanton said. “They rented us this place, and they went to Alaska. They aren’t coming back until November.”
    “How long you been here?” Youngie asked.
    “Since March,” Clanton said. Then, “I want a fuckin’ lawyer. I ain’t sayin’ no more, but there wasn’t no fuckin’ Charlie here.”
    Lucas turned back to Sandy Martin: “Is that right? The brothers are up in Alaska?”
    “I can’t prove it, but they said they were going there,” Martin said. “They bought a new truck for the trip.”
    “And you never met Charlie Pope.”
    After a moment of silence, Martin said, “Look, I’m just watching the house, okay?”
    Not a denial. Lucas looked at Youngie, who raised his eyebrows. “Sandy, this is a murder charge we’re talking about here,” Lucas said. “You give Charlie Pope one ounce of cover, man, you’re right in it with him.”
    Another moment of silence, then, “He was up here. A month ago.”
    “A month ago. With Bobby here?”
    “Yeah.” Martin looked uncomfortable.
    “You’re fuckin’ lyin’,” Clanton said. He was angry, turning to face down Martin.
    “You were talking,” Martin said to him.
    “You’re full of shit, you little asshole,” Clanton shouted. “They’re gonna find out . . .”
    “He was here,” Martin insisted. “He was that guy who walked up the hill, he had that bag of doughnuts . . .”
     
    LUCAS WAS LOOKING at Clanton’s face as he absorbed what Martin had said. His expression shifted from anger to confusion and then to disbelief. He said, “That retard? The retard with the smiley T-shirt?”
    “That’s him,” Martin said.
    “I didn’t know who he was,” Clanton said, lifting his head to look at Lucas. And, “We ran that asshole off. He wanted to pick beans or some shit. We told him we didn’t have no fuckin’ beans, and to go the fuck away.”
    Clanton told the story, and it was short: Pope had been at the farmhouse for ten minutes, having hitchhiked out from Austin. When he found out there weren’t any beans, he walked back down the hill with his bag of doughnuts.
    “What’s this about the doughnuts?” Youngie asked.
    “It was like he thought he might be camping out, and he needed food, so he bought doughnuts,” Martin said.
    Clanton said, “He’s a fuckin’ retard. He can’t be the guy who did all that shit. He walks around in a smiley shirt with a bag of doughnuts, for Christ’s sake.”
    Lucas pressed the pad to his face and said, “Jesus.”
     
    THE DEPUTIES CLEARED the farmhouse and found a hundred and fifty gallons of agricultural precursor in the kitchen—so much for Sandy Martin’s tale of checking the house. With cops all over the place, and no real information about Pope, Lucas decided to head back home. He washed his face in the farmhouse kitchen sink, got a new first-aid pad from Youngie, and climbed into his truck.
    “You oughta stop at the hospital,” Youngie said.
    “I’m only an hour and a half from home.”
    “There’s gonna be a report, the gunshots . . .”
    “You can do most of it. I’ll either send you an affidavit